Yes my blog shall also be a ranting platform for me. I won't tell people to read my rants of course but writing out will help me feel a bit better. If someone visits my blog and sees my rant, hopefully some might give me some sort of advice at least.
Being able to have my career related to the ocean & the living creatures inside it has always been my life long dream. (Well, I know I've only been on this Earth for 18 years) At this point, I honestly can't see myself doing anything else than marine biology.
In all my previous posts, when I do blog about wanting to do marine biology, I might sound pretty damn confident about it. To be frank, I'm scared shitless and doubtful about my decision. Sometimes I'm even quite embarrassed to tell the adults when they ask me what I want to be. I was fortunate that some adults out there were really supportive of it but the other half, don't see it the same. Maybe it's the typical Asian mentality, I don't know.
My family members aren't FORCING me to choose a different career path but they are trying to convince me to do something else other than marine biology. They sometimes talk about it as if it's a joke and maybe a hint of mockery added into it. "She wants to talk the dolphins in the future" (It sounds more insulting in Cantonese, haha) Anyway, back to the point, when they say things like that, I get hurt. I know they just meant it as a joke but I can't help but to take it abit personally because it's something I strongly love and believe in. It demotivates me when they say things like that, it makes me doubt my choice even more. Yeah we shouldn't care what others say but this is my family and I care about their opinions and all so I do take what they say personally as well.
I'm not trying to bad mouth my family or anything like that, believe me when I say I love them more than anything else in the world. But it's just really hard to go after your dreams when the people you love and loves you don't really support it :/
I have people telling me to get a stable job first and then do marine biology when I have enough money blah blah blah. Basically, they want me to take a safe route first. What if I don't get a chance like that in the future anymore? What if I'm too busy with my family or with my "stable career" that I can't go after my dreams anymore? I'll spend my whole life wishing I went down the other road instead.
I'm not required to choose what to major in so quickly so when I'm in college, I promised myself to keep an open mind and who knows I might find something else that I really wanna do instead of marine biology. I might not be the Rachel that people knew in high school as the girl who wanted to associate her life with dolphins. Who knows? Only time will tell. Marine biology is a really really big field, it's getting more competitive and I might struggle to find a job in the end. People will tell me "I told you so" but that's okay, if I was too stubborn to listen then I'm willing to face the consequences of my own actions.
I've met this journalist from The Star once, she told me she wished she did marine biology instead but she was too afraid to pursue it. She told me to just go after it. I'm willing to take the leap of faith, for myself to go after my possible dream and for others who are too afraid to do what they really want. I'm going to take the risk. Your job is probably something you're going to be tied to for most of your life, so I hope to also find joy in it and not just earning money.
All in all, whatever decisions you make for your future should be all up to you and no one else. But you must also take full responsibility of your own actions. I guess you can never always make the right choices but that's okay, that's life for you I don't know, whether the decision I make will be the right one, I guess we'll find out sometime in the future. Meanwhile, I guess I'm just going to go with my heart. I want to live my life knowing that I did try going after my dream, and if it doesn't work out, hopefully, I will have another dream to go after. I just think it's better to try going after it than live your life not trying at all.
Anyway, thank you so much for hearing me out. I felt so much better after writing this:)
Love Rachel*
Thursday, 23 July 2015
Thursday, 9 July 2015
#dontjudgechallenge
Hey y'all! Yes, I changed my blog design again, I get bored of how it looks too quickly:b I'm still making little changes to it. All these html tweaking stuff was a bit complicating but yet very interesting so I'm still in the learning process!
Since most of you have Twitter/Instagram, I'm sure you would have come across videos with the title "#dontjudgechallenge". There were a few videos on my Facebook feed so I was curious to see what it was all about. At first, I thought this was just those silly challenges but when I googled for the main intention of the challenge, I have to say, this challenge is really stupid.
Now, for those who do not know what the #dontjudgechallenge is, it's basically a person making him/herself look 'ugly' by drawing their face with marker, tying their hair badly etc then, they'll cover the camera and next appears a "beautiful version" of themselves. You can say it's suppose to be a transformation video. I think what the video is trying to say is, "oh don't judge a book by its cover, I can actually look super amazing."
The funny thing is, the main goal of this challenge was to protest against body shaming. Yes, I know this is a don't judge challenge, yet, I'm gonna be giving my opinion on how stupid this challenge is. (don't judge, lol) Instead of protesting against body shaming, I think what these people are doing is that they're putting a fixed representation of what 'ugly' is and what 'beautiful' is in society. So where's the part where you try and stop body shaming? When I watch these videos, people are just drawing their faces with markers and making ugly faces. In one of the videos I watched, this guys had Q-tips sticking out of his ear, hahahaha! Seriously though, I doubt there'll be people out there who will be walking around with Q-tips in his ear, it's too ticklish! Anyway, after their 'miraculous' transformation, its either some girls with their make up on while showing their cleavage or some guys become shirtless, they flex their muscles, bite their lips and all. Are you suppose to be 10x hotter with your tits hanging out or with you pulling your pants as low as possible? If that's your perception of 'beauty', then yeah thats great, good for you but what they are doing is putting down the people who actually have acne conditions, (Nobody wants to have acne, it's bloody painful and disturbing but some people can't help it because their body reacts that way) or people with glasses or people with unibrows (If they like their unibrow, leave them be) or people with exceptionally different moustaches etc.
I just think this challenge ended up sending the exact opposite message of its main intention. Many people now are just totally veering off the main aim of doing this challenge and their turning it into something vain instead. "Look world! After getting rid all of the sharpie on my face, I'm fucking hot now!" We all have our own perception of beauty and yes we are all entitled to our own opinions. But this challenge is like someone shouting at you in real life, "Hey! That's what ugly looks like!" It can be a real slap in the face for some people. We want everyone to accept and love who they are but how can people do that when there are people out there who keep emphasising on what beauty is supposed to be with challenges like that?
If there's a challenge that has to be out there, I think a challenge where the girls do a before with make up on and an after without the make up. Maybe that will help more girls to be comfortable in their own skin. (Just a thought). I just have quite a few friends who never dare to go out without having make up on, but I hope that girls out there know that they're still beautiful even without all of the make up :)
I guess, at the end of they day we're all humans and we can't help but judge. Anyhow, I do hope if we ever do judge, that it'd be for the better (makes sense?). I had to be really careful when I wrote this post as well because I too have my own perception on what beauty is and it might be a little touchy to some readers. I did not mean to offend anyone, if I did, I'm very sorry. I'm just putting how stupid this challenge is out there, I don't support it at all. Come on guys, it's just face with marker and face with no marker.. *shrugs* It's another stupid internet trend we DON'T WANT to encourage. We're just taking a huge step back on trying to improve society.
Love Rachel*
Since most of you have Twitter/Instagram, I'm sure you would have come across videos with the title "#dontjudgechallenge". There were a few videos on my Facebook feed so I was curious to see what it was all about. At first, I thought this was just those silly challenges but when I googled for the main intention of the challenge, I have to say, this challenge is really stupid.
This is freaking hilarious! HAHAHA!
Now, for those who do not know what the #dontjudgechallenge is, it's basically a person making him/herself look 'ugly' by drawing their face with marker, tying their hair badly etc then, they'll cover the camera and next appears a "beautiful version" of themselves. You can say it's suppose to be a transformation video. I think what the video is trying to say is, "oh don't judge a book by its cover, I can actually look super amazing."
Here's an idea of what the challenge is like. I just got this video off youtube, so the owner can have all the credit.
There's a page called "Don't Judge Challenge" on Facebook where people submit their videos. Go check it out, some are just super absurdly funny (That's not a real phrase... Is it?)
I just think this challenge ended up sending the exact opposite message of its main intention. Many people now are just totally veering off the main aim of doing this challenge and their turning it into something vain instead. "Look world! After getting rid all of the sharpie on my face, I'm fucking hot now!" We all have our own perception of beauty and yes we are all entitled to our own opinions. But this challenge is like someone shouting at you in real life, "Hey! That's what ugly looks like!" It can be a real slap in the face for some people. We want everyone to accept and love who they are but how can people do that when there are people out there who keep emphasising on what beauty is supposed to be with challenges like that?
If there's a challenge that has to be out there, I think a challenge where the girls do a before with make up on and an after without the make up. Maybe that will help more girls to be comfortable in their own skin. (Just a thought). I just have quite a few friends who never dare to go out without having make up on, but I hope that girls out there know that they're still beautiful even without all of the make up :)
Check out this girl who did the exact opposite of the challenge. I really salute her, I don't think I would have been able to do the same if I was in her shoes.
Love Rachel*
Thursday, 2 July 2015
My 1st Diving Trip: Pulau Perhentian
I am now a certified PADI Open Water Diver! YAY! It's probably not a big deal to most of you people but it is to me because I'm one step closer to achieving my dream hehe.
Anyway, I've been really excited about sharing my experience with you guys because my dive trip was super fun! I really hope through my experience people of all ages will take up diving and be able to experience the underwater world too and also protect it!
I honestly don't know where to begin and how to describe my experience underwater. If I could put it in one word I would say that it felt magical. You would probably think that I'm exaggerating but that was just how I felt when I was diving. You'll feel like you're floating and when you see the reefs and the weird creatures and plants underwater, it just feels so surreal. If you don't dive, you'll never be able to see the cool things down there for yourself. I remember when I went snorkelling in Tioman, it was really amazing but going diving, the "amazingness" is x39847204704009490. Seriously.
I stayed at Bubbles Dive Resort and I loved it there. Simple, clean, eco-friendly and damn good food! Their service was great, people were friendly, my guides were really nice and they had open air bathrooms! I just have a thing for open air bathrooms, I love the sunlight shining in and at night, you watch the stars while you shower hehe! Anyway that resort was great, you can even just go there for snorkelling trips or maybe just a weekend getaway! It's cheap :D
Altogether, I did 5 dives during my trip. The first dive was at the Bubbles House Reef so we just had to swim and descend to the reef. We saw two big groupers, spade fishes, a giant clam, fusiliers wrasse fish but it wasn't much compared to the next few dives but then again, it was my very first dive so it was for me to get comfortable underwater and practice some skills. Honestly, I don't think I've ever been so comfortable underwater. I just felt so at home (I'm destined to be a mermaid, HAHAHA). It was a great start :) After an hour, we were out of the water, get back to changing tanks, short break and boom, time for the second dive.
I cannot express enough my anger towards the fucking boat driver that took us to our second dive spot. Our 1st & 2nd dives were delayed because we arrived late and that wasn't our fault. The boat driver was angry at us that he had to work later or something like that. So you know what he did? The waves were very strong and that would result a very bumpy boat ride. If that's the case, the boat driver should drive slowly and slow down whenever there's a big wave (that's what they're paid to do because if anyone gets hurt because of the boat ride, the boat drivers will get their asses handed to them) but no, he went as fast as he could trying to make everyone on the boat suffer. We kept flying off our seats and it was so effing painful every time our asses hit the seats. My dive guide was too nice to tell him off if not he would have kena nicely. If my instructor didn't tell him to turn back to dive in a nearer dive spot, someone could have gotten hurt and the boat would have probably cracked. It was a really bad and painful ride. I know it's mean of me to say this but I hope they fire his ass by now because it was freaking obvious that it was on purpose, everyone on the boat knew. You should have seen his face, I really wanted to slap him. But I didn't want that son of a gun to ruin my dive trip.
Every trip has its up and down anyway, so that was my only down for the trip. Thank God. The others in my group had a night dive one the first day but Mark & I couldn't go because we didn't have the certification yet :( And they saw a turtle which made me really jealous because I didn't see any turtles during any of my dives:/
OH! My third dive was super cool! It was called the "sugar wreck". The ship was used to transport sugar hence the name but according to my instructor, the ship was suppose to arrive somewhere to get it fixed but I think there was something about not wanting to pay for the fixing or something like that so the people on the boat purposely sunk the ship but everyone else on board was safe. The ship was 600m long and 6m high (i think?) As I was descending, all I saw was a giant, blurry shadow. The 3rd dive was deeper than my earlier dives so I was kinda scared and all the while, I was looking down trying to calm myself. Right when I looked up, I saw this giant, rusty ship lying on its side and in my head I said, "Holy crap.... This is so freaking cool." The wreck was damn cool though, come on, if you saw a ship wreck in front of you, don't you think you'll be in awe?!?! I really don't know how to explain how taken aback I was... It was really just an unbelievable sight. You'll have to see a wreck for yourself to know how I felt at that moment. We went around the wreck and I saw a "map giant puffer fish" and also two black & white lion fish that were hiding. They were a shit loads of sea urchins on the sea bed though and my instructor was bouncing one up and down on his hand. Don't ask me how he did it because I had no idea. There was no way in hell I wanted to dive so close to the sea bed. Mark was low on air and he was my buddy so we had to ascend earlier. On our way up I saw two box fish (so freaking cute) on the other side of the boat which turned into a reef. It was covered with beautiful corals and school of fishes!
When we got back to the dive centre, same procedure. Change tanks, had yummy lunch, chill and off again to our 4th dive!
We dived at Batu Layar for our 4th dive although there were no Batu's at all lol but instead it is a giant, submerged, circular reef. It was so breathtaking! The reef was seriously beautiful, there was so much life and colour!!! I saw a lot of things this time around: a net giant pufferfish which was pregnant i think, another cute box fish, trigger fish, butterfly fish (the fish that supposedly has a black dot at its tail to fool his predator that it's going the other way), damsel fish (Deb/Flo, the fish that thinks her reflection is her twin sister in Nemo), cleaner wrasse (the tiny fish that eats parasites), a pillow starfish, file fish (pretty cool, front of the fish had a distinct black and the back half was distinct white) and a snapper!! My instructor stayed very still and the cleaner wrasse came to pick on his skin and he opened his mouth to let the wrasse clean it but it didn't :b I have to say the 4th dive was my favourite, there were so many things to see until you don't know where to look. The dive was great but I had to do mask removing and then recovering it at the 5m safety stop to pass my test. I struggled really badly because I can't stand it if I had to stay underwater without being able to see. I'll feel so vulnerable and paranoid. I took a long while to calm down but thankfully my instructor was really patient with me. Once my mask was off, I could feel my chest tighten and my breaths were quick and short so I inhaled from my regulator as though like I was running out of air but in reality, I had about a 100 bar left lol. Finally I did it and yay, at the surface my instructor congratulated us for being an official Open Water Diver! Of course there were a lot more skills la than just removing mask, hahaha but just mentioning the one that I took ages to do -.-
Again, back to dive centre, change tanks had some watermelons and kickass cekodok pisang (deep fried banana balls), ugh, mouthgasm man (that came out not how I thought it would. HAHA). At this point I had almost zero energy left. You're probably thinking, "diving only what, you're just gliding through the water" which was what I thought as well but nope. You'll be surprised how tiring back to back diving can be. Other than using the energy to carry our tanks and other diving equipment back and forth, I had no clue what else could be draining so much energy. Maybe it's like getting tired after a long car ride, you don't do much but you're still dead tired. Get me?
Alas! My final dive for the trip! :( The spot was called Tiger Rock but this time there were huge boulders but why tiger? I have no clue either :b This dive was the deepest by far, 22m ish? It was considered deep diving. This time around my instructor decided to bring an egg underwater, yes, raw egg and he cracked it underwater!!! Aren't you curious what would happen to an egg when you crack it underwater? I didn't bother thinking about the possibilities but man I didn't know cracking an egg underwater could be so cool! We were playing with the raw egg HAHA. When my instructor cracked the egg with a knife, I could hear the cracking so loudly in my ear *cringes* and bloop! The raw egg floated out and you could see the membrane and all so clearly! When you do this spinning gesture with your finger near the egg, the egg follows you which was quite cute :b We kept playing with it and eventually, the yolk and the white separated. We all kept poking the yolk because it was so squishy but then Mr Smart Mark thought that it wasn't fragile at all and decided to play badminton with it. Yep, that was the end of the egg yolk and it slowly went up the surface.
Since we were swimming around giant rocks, we had to be extra cautious because there were really sharp barnacles all around. OH! We swam in between the boulders, that was cool. It felt like you were on a little adventure especially when you were a little kid and you would crawl through those cylinder things at the playground, ya that kinda feeling :3 This dive was a bit scary because we swam through tight places and when you look down, it's pitch black... It is exactly like how you see in those movies. My instructor managed to spot a white and rare nudi branch, it was really pretty! There were huge table corals and also a hermit crab floating around :b There were tons and tons of fishes but it's so hard to identify them and remember them after the dive :( But yes, colourful fishes everywhere!
On my second night, I attended the turtle talk Bubbles held almost every night. Did you know that Leatherback turtles are extinct in Malaysia :( Apparently, they have this special way of ingesting their food. They have these spikes at their "neck" and they "inhale" the jellyfish in and since they only feed on jellyfish, they mistaken plastic bags for them. So when the leatherback turtles inhale the plastic bag in, they choke and die :/ It's really sad la :( Anyway yes, if you want to watch turtles lay eggs which they do almost every night at Bubbles' beach front, you'll have to attend the short talk but it was really interesting! DID YOU KNOW that green turtles are actually red on the outside but their fat is actually green, cool eh :b I was really lucky on that night because they released turtle hatchlings and I was really excited! They were so adorable!!! Another thing checked off my bucket list! Unfortunately though, I couldn't wake up when they knocked on our door to watch the mother turtle lay eggs. I was super tired from the 3 dives but hell, I really regretted not waking up. It was a once in a life time opportunity and I missed it. If you have a chance like that don't waste it :( You get to see wild animals going about in their own daily lives and there's definitely nowhere else in the city where you can witness things like that. Maybe that's why I love diving so much, it's so different from going to the zoo or aquariums. You get to see unique and different creatures in their natural habitats which makes it even more special. They're not tamed or fed by humans, you see them glide through the water, watch them hunt for their own food, you appreciate the beauty of it even more that way:)
I've managed to see the nemo fish in their anemone in all 5 dives. I went really close and they're actually pretty ugly HAHAHA, not like cute little nemo. They look pretty angry most of the time :b
Every dive was really different and unique. You can never have this experience anywhere else, seriously. I tried my hardest to give you guys a visual on how my diving experience went but I really don't think words will ever be enough to express it. You've just got to see it for yourself and when you do, you'll know why it's so important to protect it and appreciate it even more. I think this diving trip really added more fuel to the burning passion I have towards the ocean. I want to discover more and learn even more about the underwater world. When my instructor told me about his past diving experiences, man, I was so envious :( His encounters with really giant fishes that came super close to him and was super curious about him, he has seen hammerhead sharks, barracudas, those really giant school of fish (like the one in nemo where they gave directions), whale sharks and so much more! UGH! I really want to go diving again, haha!
I know its quite a pricey hobby to take up but I'm not lying when I say that it's worth the experience. I don't know, maybe it's just me. Some people can't appreciate things like that but if you do like to discover, go dive! You won't regret it :)
I guess I should stop talking now, it's such a long post! If you read the whole way, thank you so much for doing so :) I just really like to share my special experiences with people in hopes that they would wanna experience it for themselves. Sorry if I had any typos that I missed, please correct me if you see any grammatical error or typos! Thank you so much again for reading until here, it means a lot to me :D Have a great July!
Love Rachel*
My botak instructor & I!
Anyway, I've been really excited about sharing my experience with you guys because my dive trip was super fun! I really hope through my experience people of all ages will take up diving and be able to experience the underwater world too and also protect it!
Pulau Perhentian Besar!
I honestly don't know where to begin and how to describe my experience underwater. If I could put it in one word I would say that it felt magical. You would probably think that I'm exaggerating but that was just how I felt when I was diving. You'll feel like you're floating and when you see the reefs and the weird creatures and plants underwater, it just feels so surreal. If you don't dive, you'll never be able to see the cool things down there for yourself. I remember when I went snorkelling in Tioman, it was really amazing but going diving, the "amazingness" is x39847204704009490. Seriously.
I stayed at Bubbles Dive Resort and I loved it there. Simple, clean, eco-friendly and damn good food! Their service was great, people were friendly, my guides were really nice and they had open air bathrooms! I just have a thing for open air bathrooms, I love the sunlight shining in and at night, you watch the stars while you shower hehe! Anyway that resort was great, you can even just go there for snorkelling trips or maybe just a weekend getaway! It's cheap :D
The beach front of the resort:) Pretty eh?
(Credits to the owner of this photo)
Sleeping quarters
The open air bathroom with the sunlight shining in :3
The beautiful view you see when you lie down on the hammocks at the beach front of the resort:)
A giant sea cucumber on my 1st dive!
(taken by my instructor)
Feather duster worm! If you sweep your hand over it, it'll like just shut tight!
(taken by my instructor)
Every trip has its up and down anyway, so that was my only down for the trip. Thank God. The others in my group had a night dive one the first day but Mark & I couldn't go because we didn't have the certification yet :( And they saw a turtle which made me really jealous because I didn't see any turtles during any of my dives:/
OH! My third dive was super cool! It was called the "sugar wreck". The ship was used to transport sugar hence the name but according to my instructor, the ship was suppose to arrive somewhere to get it fixed but I think there was something about not wanting to pay for the fixing or something like that so the people on the boat purposely sunk the ship but everyone else on board was safe. The ship was 600m long and 6m high (i think?) As I was descending, all I saw was a giant, blurry shadow. The 3rd dive was deeper than my earlier dives so I was kinda scared and all the while, I was looking down trying to calm myself. Right when I looked up, I saw this giant, rusty ship lying on its side and in my head I said, "Holy crap.... This is so freaking cool." The wreck was damn cool though, come on, if you saw a ship wreck in front of you, don't you think you'll be in awe?!?! I really don't know how to explain how taken aback I was... It was really just an unbelievable sight. You'll have to see a wreck for yourself to know how I felt at that moment. We went around the wreck and I saw a "map giant puffer fish" and also two black & white lion fish that were hiding. They were a shit loads of sea urchins on the sea bed though and my instructor was bouncing one up and down on his hand. Don't ask me how he did it because I had no idea. There was no way in hell I wanted to dive so close to the sea bed. Mark was low on air and he was my buddy so we had to ascend earlier. On our way up I saw two box fish (so freaking cute) on the other side of the boat which turned into a reef. It was covered with beautiful corals and school of fishes!
Equalising the pressure so our ears won't hurt! See the wreck behind us? :)
Not sure whether you can see it but this is a small part of the wreck! Had to screenshot this from a video my instructor took.
This is a box fish! Can you see that its like really square? Cute eh:b
(Got this off google though)
This looks exactly like the lion fish I saw! The pointy parts are all poisonous and it's usually to ward off predators.
(Google!)
We dived at Batu Layar for our 4th dive although there were no Batu's at all lol but instead it is a giant, submerged, circular reef. It was so breathtaking! The reef was seriously beautiful, there was so much life and colour!!! I saw a lot of things this time around: a net giant pufferfish which was pregnant i think, another cute box fish, trigger fish, butterfly fish (the fish that supposedly has a black dot at its tail to fool his predator that it's going the other way), damsel fish (Deb/Flo, the fish that thinks her reflection is her twin sister in Nemo), cleaner wrasse (the tiny fish that eats parasites), a pillow starfish, file fish (pretty cool, front of the fish had a distinct black and the back half was distinct white) and a snapper!! My instructor stayed very still and the cleaner wrasse came to pick on his skin and he opened his mouth to let the wrasse clean it but it didn't :b I have to say the 4th dive was my favourite, there were so many things to see until you don't know where to look. The dive was great but I had to do mask removing and then recovering it at the 5m safety stop to pass my test. I struggled really badly because I can't stand it if I had to stay underwater without being able to see. I'll feel so vulnerable and paranoid. I took a long while to calm down but thankfully my instructor was really patient with me. Once my mask was off, I could feel my chest tighten and my breaths were quick and short so I inhaled from my regulator as though like I was running out of air but in reality, I had about a 100 bar left lol. Finally I did it and yay, at the surface my instructor congratulated us for being an official Open Water Diver! Of course there were a lot more skills la than just removing mask, hahaha but just mentioning the one that I took ages to do -.-
This is a butterfly fish! :)
(google)
Pregnant Net Pufferfish I saw
(taken by my instructor)
Another pufferfish!
I wanted to take a picture with the beautiful reef but, China go pro, what do you expect right:b
(taken by Mark)
Alas! My final dive for the trip! :( The spot was called Tiger Rock but this time there were huge boulders but why tiger? I have no clue either :b This dive was the deepest by far, 22m ish? It was considered deep diving. This time around my instructor decided to bring an egg underwater, yes, raw egg and he cracked it underwater!!! Aren't you curious what would happen to an egg when you crack it underwater? I didn't bother thinking about the possibilities but man I didn't know cracking an egg underwater could be so cool! We were playing with the raw egg HAHA. When my instructor cracked the egg with a knife, I could hear the cracking so loudly in my ear *cringes* and bloop! The raw egg floated out and you could see the membrane and all so clearly! When you do this spinning gesture with your finger near the egg, the egg follows you which was quite cute :b We kept playing with it and eventually, the yolk and the white separated. We all kept poking the yolk because it was so squishy but then Mr Smart Mark thought that it wasn't fragile at all and decided to play badminton with it. Yep, that was the end of the egg yolk and it slowly went up the surface.
Since we were swimming around giant rocks, we had to be extra cautious because there were really sharp barnacles all around. OH! We swam in between the boulders, that was cool. It felt like you were on a little adventure especially when you were a little kid and you would crawl through those cylinder things at the playground, ya that kinda feeling :3 This dive was a bit scary because we swam through tight places and when you look down, it's pitch black... It is exactly like how you see in those movies. My instructor managed to spot a white and rare nudi branch, it was really pretty! There were huge table corals and also a hermit crab floating around :b There were tons and tons of fishes but it's so hard to identify them and remember them after the dive :( But yes, colourful fishes everywhere!
On my second night, I attended the turtle talk Bubbles held almost every night. Did you know that Leatherback turtles are extinct in Malaysia :( Apparently, they have this special way of ingesting their food. They have these spikes at their "neck" and they "inhale" the jellyfish in and since they only feed on jellyfish, they mistaken plastic bags for them. So when the leatherback turtles inhale the plastic bag in, they choke and die :/ It's really sad la :( Anyway yes, if you want to watch turtles lay eggs which they do almost every night at Bubbles' beach front, you'll have to attend the short talk but it was really interesting! DID YOU KNOW that green turtles are actually red on the outside but their fat is actually green, cool eh :b I was really lucky on that night because they released turtle hatchlings and I was really excited! They were so adorable!!! Another thing checked off my bucket list! Unfortunately though, I couldn't wake up when they knocked on our door to watch the mother turtle lay eggs. I was super tired from the 3 dives but hell, I really regretted not waking up. It was a once in a life time opportunity and I missed it. If you have a chance like that don't waste it :( You get to see wild animals going about in their own daily lives and there's definitely nowhere else in the city where you can witness things like that. Maybe that's why I love diving so much, it's so different from going to the zoo or aquariums. You get to see unique and different creatures in their natural habitats which makes it even more special. They're not tamed or fed by humans, you see them glide through the water, watch them hunt for their own food, you appreciate the beauty of it even more that way:)
I've managed to see the nemo fish in their anemone in all 5 dives. I went really close and they're actually pretty ugly HAHAHA, not like cute little nemo. They look pretty angry most of the time :b
Every dive was really different and unique. You can never have this experience anywhere else, seriously. I tried my hardest to give you guys a visual on how my diving experience went but I really don't think words will ever be enough to express it. You've just got to see it for yourself and when you do, you'll know why it's so important to protect it and appreciate it even more. I think this diving trip really added more fuel to the burning passion I have towards the ocean. I want to discover more and learn even more about the underwater world. When my instructor told me about his past diving experiences, man, I was so envious :( His encounters with really giant fishes that came super close to him and was super curious about him, he has seen hammerhead sharks, barracudas, those really giant school of fish (like the one in nemo where they gave directions), whale sharks and so much more! UGH! I really want to go diving again, haha!
New friends I met during the dive trip :)
And look at the clear water behind us!!
A new adventure for the two of us:)
I guess I should stop talking now, it's such a long post! If you read the whole way, thank you so much for doing so :) I just really like to share my special experiences with people in hopes that they would wanna experience it for themselves. Sorry if I had any typos that I missed, please correct me if you see any grammatical error or typos! Thank you so much again for reading until here, it means a lot to me :D Have a great July!
Love Rachel*
